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Quote by Donna Tartt

“If he really wanted to be happy in the world, Horst? To have any kind of joyful or happy life? He should pay twenty grand to go back to his rapid detox place and then come here and smoke Buddha Haze and stand in a museum all day long.”

Quote by Donna Tartt

Work

The Goldfinch

A story centered around a young boy who survives a tragic accident and is left with a priceless painting, leading to a complex journey of self-discovery and moral dilemmas. more

Author

Donna Tartt
Donna Tartt

Donna Tartt is an American author known for her unique narrative style and profound psychological descriptions. Her works are characterized by complex characters and captivating plots. Her debut novel, 'The Goldfinch,' received widespread acclaim and won multiple literary awards. more

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“…But Jessica changed all that. Richard found himself, on otherwise sensible weekends, accompanying her to places like the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery, where he learned that walking around museums too long hurts your feet, that the great art treasures of the world all blur into each other after a while, and that it is almost beyond the human capacity for belief to accept how much museum cafeterias will brazenly charge for a slice of cake and a cup of tea. "Here's your tea and your éclair," he told her. "It would have cost less to buy one of those Tintorettos." "Don't exaggerate," said Jessica cheerfully. "Anyway, there aren't any Tintorettos at the Tate." "I should have had that cherry cake," said Richard. "Then they would have been able to afford another Van Gogh.”

“The prospect of physical discomfort has not deterred anyone from buying, or sitting in, chairs that hurt. A painful chair, however, is more willingly bought and endured if it carries the imprimatur of a museum or some other respectable design authenticator. Randall Jarrell noted, with great wit but no exaggeration, that there are people who "...will sit on a porcupine if you first exhibit it at the Museum of Modern Art and say that it is a chair. In fact, there is nothing, nothing in the whole world that someone won't buy and sit in if you tell him that it is a chair...”

“The greatest treasures are not found in museums, but in our hearts.”

“The bus here because they lost Rosa Parks's bus." "Who lost Rosa Parks's bus?" "White people. Who the fuck else? Supposedly, every February when schoolkids visit the Rosa Parks Museum, or wherever the fuck the bus is at, the bus they tell the kids is the birthplace of the civil rights movement is a phony. Just some old Birmingham city bus they found in some junkyard. That's what my sister says, anyway." "I don't know." Cuz took two deep swallows of gin. "What you mean, 'You don't know'? You think that after Rosa Parks bitch-slapped white America, some white rednecks going to go out of their way to save the original bus? That'd be like the Celtics hanging Magic Johnson's jersey in the rafters of the Boston Garden. No fucking way.”

“I used to wonder: Do only ignorant laypeople gaze on the colossal bust of Ramses II at the British Museum and ask themselves how it ended up there? Is it only the unschooled visitor who looks at the soaring column from the Temple of Artemis at the Met and questions why it exists in this place?”